X-ray Crystallography Core

Core Summary

The X-ray Crystallography Facility located at 99 Brookline Ave. (Research North) was recently established as a core to serve the needs of investigators in the BIDMC and Harvard Medical School community interested in using structural biology as a tool in their research.

The laboratory houses instrumentation consisting of :

Micromax 007 X-ray generator

R-Axis HTC detector

Osmic VariMax HF confocal optics

X-Stream 2000 cryogenic device for data collection at 100K

A Peak Scientific nitrogen generator

Two Olympus microscopes are available for inspecting and photographing crystal trays

Two incubators (4ºC - 25ºC) are available for crystallization experiments

A Leica Z6 Stereo Microscope with polarizer

A Spot Flex 15.2 64 Mp Shifting Pixel Digital Camera

TTPLabtech Mosquito nanolitre crystallization robot

Supporting computing facilities include several Linux PCs which can be used for data acquisition, analysis and processing.

Services

Guidance on expression, purification and crystallization of macromolecules for X-ray crystal structure analysis

Characterization of crystals

Collection of X-ray data at ambient temperature and 100K

Optimization of cryo conditions

Data analysis and processing

Data collection using synchrotron radiation

Advice on phasing strategies including molecular replacement and multiwavelength methods